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Topic: Hormesis and the limbic brain (Read 1642 times)

To start off 2012, I've uploaded a new post, with what I hope to be a thought provoking concept. (And also to liven up this forum, which has been lagging in energy and recently has been victimized by spammers. My apologies for this annoyance. I'm trying to find a blog developer who can help me fix that problem).

Hormesis comes in several forms. One type of hormesis relates to structural adaptations -- growing muscle, re-shaping the myopic eye. A second type deals with defense against foreign substances -- the immune system and xenobiotic antioxidant defense.

The third type is particularly interesting to me. It involves what I call "psycho-metabolic adaptation" -- using intermittent fasting and intense exercise to alter body fat "set point", or sleep restriction therapy to treat insomnia. I devised the term "psycho-metabolic" to reflect the observation that these adaptations simultaneously change psychic states such as hunger or tiredness, and objective metabolic states such as fat mobilization/storage balance or basal metabolic rate. My latest post takes off from the previous article on the role of the hypothalamus in obesity, to propose a more general view of how the hypothalamus and amygdala work together to govern a diverse range of basic drives, including appetite, sleep, body temperature, sexual and social interest, and aggression.

I think that hormesis can be a useful tool to correct or adjust the regulation of all of these drives, and can do so in a more sustainable way than resorting to alternatives such as pharmaceuticals or short term diet gimmicks.

A realization of the compactness of the hypothalamus and amygdala also raised the interesting question of how these seemingly basic drives can interact with each other.